Talking about taxes is always a little tricky for the first four months of the year. During that time, people usually mean the previous year’s taxes, which they are working on filing, but savvy financial folks are always planning and minimizing taxes, so they could be talking about the current year taxes too. Using the year doesn’t always help. Although 2012 taxes mean taxes that were incurred during 2012, folks filing 2012 taxes do so during 2013.
That being said, the 2012 tax season refers to the taxes we are compiling and filing now, in 2013. The IRS started officially accepting tax returns on January 31st, the signs are out in front of H&R Block, and TurboTax deals have started showing up in ad forms everywhere.
2012 Tax Forms
Depending upon how old you are, or more specifically, how long you have been filing taxes, you can remember back when getting paper tax forms was not done via the internet. Once upon a time you could get Form 1040, and others at the Post Office. When they stopped doing that, you could get them at most public libraries. If you still lived at the same address you filed from the previous year, you would also get the a 1040 in the mail directly from the IRS. Those days have gone, but in a way, getting tax forms is easier than ever.
Assuming you want to file on a paper form, or just want them around for reference or as working copies, all official tax forms can be downloaded directly from the IRS website. Just remember that the Internal Revenue Service is at irs.gov, not irs.com.
This year, the IRS has a main link to tax forms used most commonly by taxpayers.
Tax Numbers 2012
There is other tax information that either doesn’t come on any forms, or comes buried in a big instruction booklet that you might want to get directly.
Here is some of the tax information we have here on FinanceGourmet.com:
And of course, you can look through all the various tax information we have here in our Taxes category.
We’ll update throughout the tax season with new tax tips, money saving tax deductions, audit triggers and other gotchas to watch out for in the 2012 tax filing season.
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